graceful figure, a mobile and expressive face, a mouth of almost feminine softness and beauty, dark and languishing eyes, and long, flowing hair. He wore a snowy toga, with a brilliant scarlet border of what is still known as "Greek fret;" and over this, fastened by a brooch at his throat, a flowing cloak. On his head sat jauntily a soft felt hat, not unlike those still worn by the Italian peasantry, and on his feet were low-laced shoes or sandals. Instead of a sword, he wore at his side a metal case for his reed-pen and for a scroll of papyrus. He was in the bloom and beauty of youth, apparently not more than twenty years of age.

The elder of the two was the Roman officer Flaccus Sertorius, a centurion of the 12th Legion, returning with his Greek secretary, Isidorus, from the town of Albano, about seventeen miles from Rome, whither he had been sent on business of state.

"This new edict of the Emperor's," remarked Sertorius to his secretary, with an air of affable condescension, "is likely to give us both work enough to do before long."

"Your Excellency forgets," replied Isidorus, with an obsequious inclination of the head, "that your humble secretary has not the same means of learning affairs of state as his noble master."

"Oh, you Greeks learn everything!" said the centurion, with a rather contemptuous laugh. "Trust you for that."

"We try to make ourselves useful to our patrons," replied the young man, "and it seems to be a sort of hereditary habit, for my Athenian ancestors were proverbial for seeking to know some new thing."

"Yes, new manners, new customs, new religions; why, your very name indicates your adherence to the new-fangled worship of Isis."

"I hold not altogether that way," replied the youth. "I belong rather to the eclectic school. My father, Apollodorus, was a priest of Phoebus, and named me, like himself, from the sungod, whom he worshipped; but I found the party of Isis fashionable at court, so I even changed my name and colours to the winning side. When one is at Rome, you know, he must do as the Romans do."

"Yes, like the degenerate Romans, who forsake the old gods, under whom the State was great and virtuous and strong," said the soldier, with an angry gesture. "The more gods, the worse the world becomes. But this new edict will make short work of some of them."

"With the Christians you mean," said the supple Greek. "A most pernicious sect, that deserve extermination with fire and sword."

"I know little about them," replied Sertorius, with a sneer, "save that they have increased prodigiously of late. Even in the army and the palace are those known to favour their obscene and contemptible doctrines."

"'Tis whispered that even their sacred highnesses the Empresses Prisca and Valeria are infected with their grovelling superstition," said the Greek secretary. "Certain it is, they seem to avoid being present at the public sacrifices, as they used to be. But the evil sect has its followers chiefly among the slaves and vile plebs of the poorest Transtiberine region of Rome."

"What do they worship, anyhow?" asked the centurion, with an air of languid curiosity. "They seem to have no temples, nor altars, nor sacrifices."

"They have dark and secret and abominable rites," replied the fawning Greek, eager to gratify the curiosity of his patron with popular slanders against the Christians. "'Tis said they worship a low-born peasant, who was crucified for sedition. Some say he had an ass's head,[1] but that, I doubt not, is a vulgar superstition; and one of our poets, the admirable Lucian, remarks that their doctrine was brought to Rome by a little hook-nosed Jew, named Paulus, who was beheaded by the divine Nero over yonder near the Ostian gate, beside the pyramid of Cestius, which you may see amongst the cypresses. They have many strange usages. Their funeral customs, especially, differ very widely from the Greek or Roman ones. They bury the body, with many mysterious rites, in vaults or chambers underground, instead of burning it on a funeral pyre. They are rank atheists, refusing to worship the gods, or even to throw so much as a grain of incense on their altar, or place a garland of flowers before their shrines, or even have their images in their houses. They are a morose, sullen, and dangerous people, and are said to hold hideous orgies at their secret assemblies underground, where they banquet on the body of a newly-slain child.[2] See yonder," he continued, pointing to a low-browed arch almost concealed by trees in a neighbouring garden, "is the entrance to one of their secret crypts, where they gather to celebrate their abominable rites, surrounded by the bones and ashes of the dead. A vile and craven set of wretches; they are not fit to live.

"They are not all cravens; to that I can bear witness," interrupted Sertorius. "I knew a fellow in my own company—Lannus was his name—who, his comrades said, was a Christian. He was the bravest and steadiest fellow in the legion; —saved my life once in Libya;—rushed between me and a lion, which sprang from a thicket as I stopped to let my horse drink at a stream—as it might be the Anio, there. The lion's fangs met in his arm, but he never winced. He may believe what he pleases for me. I like not this blood-hound business of hunting down honest men because they worship gods of their own. But the Emperor's edict is written, as you may say, with the point of a dagger—'The Christian religion must everywhere be destroyed.'"

"And quite right, too, your Excellency," said the soft-smiling Greek. "They are seditious conspirators, the enemies of Cæsar and of Rome."

"A Roman soldier does not need to learn of thee, hungry Greekling,"[3] exclaimed the centurion, haughtily, "what is his duty to his country!"

"True, most noble sir," faltered the discomfited secretary, yet with a vindictive glance from his treacherous eyes. "Your Excellency is always right."

For a time they rode on in silence, the secretary falling obsequiously a little to the rear. It was now high noon, and the crowd and bustle on the Appian Way redoubled. This Queen of Roads[4] ran straight as an arrow up-hill and down from Rome to Capua and Brundisium, a distance of over three hundred miles. Though then nearly six hundred years old, it was as firm as the day it was laid, and after the lapse of fifteen hundred years more, during which "the Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood and Fire," have devastated the land, its firm lava pavement of broad basaltic slabs seems as enduring as ever. On every side rolled the undulating Campagna, now a scene of melancholy desolation, then cultivated like a garden, abounding in villas and mansions whose marble columns gleamed snowy white through the luxuriant foliage of their embosoming myrtle and laurel groves. On either side of the road were the stately tombs of Rome's mighty dead-her prætors, proconsuls, and senators some, like the mausoleum of Cæcilia Metella,[5] rising like a solid fortress; others were like little wayside altars, but all were surrounded by an elegantly kept green sward, adorned with parterres of flowers. Their ruins now rise